From in-class writing

Tim is looking through his binoculars. The steady pitching of the boat disrupts his vision, and he asks to borrow my camera. My lens can’t zoom in as far, but we take the picture to study more steadily.
Our focus is on the base of the cliffs. The thick, striped bodies lined up along the ocean, dipping their rocky toes into the water. The drop from the top is a menacing distance. Something blue is caught there, between the rocky toes. It looks weak against the unyielding bodies of the cliffs.
Tim thinks it is a body. He tells me stories of jumpers, in statistics, and how there is a railing now, at the top. The statistics only went down a little. Sometimes the victim is involuntary.
“There was a bride once,” he says, “They were taking the wedding photos at the top. She wanted to look over the edge, so her husband held on to her as she leaned out. But he only held on to her coat, and she slipped out and fell down, and he was left holding an empty jacket.”
I am astonished by his cheerful manner.
Tim is zooming in on the picture. It gets grainy. I am convinced it is only garbage. I don’t want to see a human form under the blue splotch on the rocks.
The boat ambles past. Tim is looking through is binoculars again. I stare at the picture.
“I think it’s just garbage,” I say. “Like a plastic bag or something.”
Tim lowers his binoculars at last. “I guess so,” he says.
I am relieved. The boat carries us out of view.